Hideo Harada and his son Shigeki’s father-son relationship

Hideo Harada and his son Shigeki have a relationship defined by estrangement, Hideo’s belated recognition of his own neglect, and an attempted reconnection whose outcome remains uncertain. For years Hideo has withdrawn from family life; when he finally considers what a son might need from a father, the thought is prompted partly by the parental love he has begun to experience in Asakusa.

Estrangement and Hideo’s Withdrawal

Hideo initially explains his lack of contact with Shigeki by saying he does not particularly miss him. Shigeki is a nineteen-year-old college sophomore, and Hideo reasons that if he was content to see little of his son before the divorce, there is no reason to suppose he has suddenly begun longing for him now. That argument exposes the history beneath the present silence: Hideo had already retreated into his own private world before the marriage ended.

As the divorce approached, Shigeki turned almost entirely away from his father and sided with Ayako. He ignored Hideo while continuing to speak easily with his mother. Hideo understands that Shigeki would be living with Ayako after the divorce and says he cannot fault him for choosing closeness with her. Yet Hideo converts that explanation into a reason to stop trying: he decides that if Shigeki can be a better son to his mother by disliking his father, he should abandon efforts to win his affection. He resolves, in effect, to forget his son.

Mamiya Challenges His Assumptions

Mamiya breaks through Hideo’s self-contained account of the separation by asking whether he should be seeing more of Shigeki. The question lands like an undeserved reprimand, in part because Hideo cannot initially see why Mamiya should intervene in his relationship with his son. Mamiya proposes setting a regular arrangement, such as seeing Shigeki once a month, while insisting that the suggestion is his own rather than Ayako’s.

Hideo rejects the idea of a schedule. He argues that Shigeki is old enough to visit whenever he wants and imagines that a nineteen-year-old would resent being required to have dinner with his father once a month. The response sounds attentive to Shigeki’s independence, but it also leaves the initiative with the son: Hideo does not have to risk asking for a meeting or discover whether his son would welcome one. Mamiya presses the question Hideo has avoided, asking whether there are times when Hideo himself would like to see Shigeki. Hideo admits that there are, even as he continues to doubt that a formal invitation would be welcome.

A Late Attempt to Reach Shigeki

Hideo’s thinking changes after he recalls Shigeki while returning from a visit to his parents in Asakusa. He wonders whether Shigeki may have learned of Ayako’s relationship with Mamiya and whether, despite being a college sophomore, he might now feel a need for a father’s love. This is a possibility, not knowledge of Shigeki’s feelings. Hideo nevertheless recognizes a new reason to act: after taking comfort in the love of his own parents, he might offer comparable affection to his son.

Rather than return home, Hideo asks the cab driver to take him to a hotel in Akasaka. Staying there will spare him from having to lie to Kei that night, and he plans to call Shigeki and invite him to lunch the following day. He also intends to give his son extra spending money. The proposed meeting is modest and practical, but Hideo is uncertain how Shigeki will receive this unexpected overture from a father who has spent years withdrawing from him.

The attempt does not immediately produce a meeting. Hideo learns that Shigeki is in America, spending three weeks of his summer vacation with the host family of a friend participating in an exchange program at a college in Arizona. The distance makes the planned lunch impossible at that moment. In a subsequent conversation about whether Ayako intends to marry Mamiya, Hideo says that Shigeki is his son too and that he has a right to be concerned about how the marriage might affect him. Ayako challenges the suddenness of this concern, reminding Hideo that he had paid little attention to their son. Hideo answers that he called because he wanted to see Shigeki: a direct statement of desire, but not evidence that the estrangement has been repaired.

Parental Love, Regret, and an Unresolved Bond

Hideo’s renewed concern for Shigeki develops alongside his imagined reunion with his deceased parents. In Asakusa he allows himself to accept the possibility of a world in which his parents, still in their thirties, welcome their middle-aged son. He reflects that he had known the delight of loved ones’ smiles through his former marriage and when Shigeki was a toddler, yet his yearning for his parents’ welcome remains powerful. The visits make parental affection present to him again, and he begins to see that affection not only as something he longs to receive but as something he could pass on to his son.

The connection is emotionally significant but does not erase Hideo’s history. During his final meal with his parents, he calls himself a failure as a husband and an inadequate father, contrasting himself with their warmth and saying that everyone, including his son, should have parents like them. As his mother and father fade from view, he cannot stop their departure; afterward, exhausted, he gathers the two pairs of chopsticks they used and wraps them carefully in a handkerchief. The chopsticks become a physical keepsake of the parental care he has received, and he later brings them to his parents’ grave, where he imagines returning with them to pray again.

That act of remembrance gives shape to Hideo’s wish to be a father differently, but the two relationships do not reach the same resolution. He can preserve his parents’ chopsticks and carry their affection into a renewed intention toward Shigeki; he cannot, on the evidence presented, know whether Shigeki will answer that intention. Their bond therefore remains poised between Hideo’s belated willingness to reach out and the long-established distance his son has reason to remember.